2. Symbolizing Society--Durkheim

Introduction

Welcome to Section 2 of Symbols and Society. The theme this week is Symbolizing Society. This follows from Section 1: Symbols as Survivals. Here's the introduction to this week

You often read the mantra that Durkheim says 'Religion is society reflected back onto itself through symbols' or something to that effect. This is correct. But, according to Durkheim, what are these symbols? How do they reflect society? And to what ends?

Overview

This week we study Durkheim's theory that religious symbols actually provide solidarity to the community. His theory marks the starting point of a theoretical school known as "Functionalism". By the end of the week, you should be able to identify how Durkheim's Functionalism differs from Frazer's Origins & Evolution approach. Specifically, you should be able to formulate the different questions Durkheim asks about symbols compared to Frazer. You should also be able to elaborate the different visions these two theories present regarding humans and culture.

Understanding Durkheim

From about the 1880s-1910s the approach of elaborating Origins and Evolution predominated. Influenced by Frazer, when we looked at symbols we asked, "What primitive or ancient belief does this symbol emanate from?"

Durkheim provide us with a new paradigm. He provided a new question, namley, "What is the role or function of this symbol in society?". From the 1910s-1950s, many anthropologists asked similar questions about all kinds of phenomena (kinship, politics, magic etc.), not just symbols. For example, "How do marriage patterns among the Japanese contribute to social stability?" or "How does Navaho politics assist in maintaining their society?" The approach of asking these questions came to be called "Functionalism".

What is Durkheim's theory about symbols? Durkheim argues that there are two kinds of things in the world: sacred (you treat with special respect) and mundane (you treat normally). His main point is that in worshipping the sacred (a flag, a totem, a football team), we are brought together. This is because the sacred symbol = us. To take a specific example, when we worship our God, we worship our community. Religion makes, and keeps, us social. In the same way, we think depend on God, we actually depend on our community. How does this work?

I'll rephrase the point using Durkheim's terms. According to Durkheim, when we worship the totem we are worshipping the totemic principle. And when we worship the totemic principle, we are worshipping ourselves. But how does Durkheim make these equations? Hopefully, my presentation entitled  "Anthropology and Symbols: Durkheim" will help:

Please feel free to use my slides.

Reading Durkheim.

Durkheim uses the example of a clan-based form of social organization (specifically from Central Australia). So it is important to gain an understanding of what anthropologists mean by words such as "clan", "totem", "taboo", "moiety", and so on. You might need to look these up as you proceed, but a good starting place might be my summary of Boas on the social organization of indigenous societies from around Seattle and Vancouver.

You should then read Durkheim in the original. I use Lessa and Vogt's selections in Reader in Comparative Religion. These come from the Elementary Forms Chapter IV, Sections 1 & II; and Chapter VII, Sections I-III. You can find similar sections online at various places. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms is difficult but rewarding. Reflecting the language of the period, the terms are definitely dated (“aborigine”, “primitive”, “simplest”). The underlying ideas, by contrast, remain powerful and incisive. 

Applying Durkheim: Australian Rules Football

To give you an example of how useful I find the ideas, you could take a look at my analysis of how people follow Australian Rules Football teams. According to one of the nicer comments, this “WAS the most CRAP I have ever read”. Hopefully, you find it more useful.

One point that I wanted to imply, unsuccessfully it seems, is that, for Durkheim, everyone is religious. Religion does not have to be about supernatural belief and faith. Rather, it's about setting some symbols aside as sacred, worshipping them, and thereby forming and reinforcing community. Personally, if I think about the US flag, the Star Spangled Banner, the Stars and Stripes, and their role in history, Durkheim's theory seems to provide great insight.

Applying Durkheim: 

Now let's see if you can apply Durkheim yourself. Let's turn to one of the main sources that Durkheim used in developing his theory of elementary forms; Urubanna society as described by the famous pair Spencer and Gillen. Before you get going you should be clear on the definitions of  "Clan"; "Totem"; "Taboo"; "Sacred"; "Profane"; "Churinga" (or "Alcheringa"). Read the following section from Spencer and Gillen (1904:145):

(Spencer, Baldwin and F.J. Gillen 1904 The northern tribes of central Australia. London: Macmillan.)

Durkheim defined religion as follows:

 A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. 

How would you apply this definition to totems and clans of Aboriginal Australian cultures? What is the relationship here between ancestor, individual, clan, and place?

Veteran's Memorial

This image features the Vietnam Veterans War memorial in Washington. This is a sacred space with several noticeable symbols. Applying Durkheim's theory, what is the moral community, and associated beliefs and practices. Can you also discern the spirits? What are the totemic emblems/symbols? What would be taboo at the memorial?

Assessing Durkheim

To reflect on Durkheim, the first thing I want to do is contrast his method with that of Frazer's. Frazer's Golden Bough is ostensibly an attempt to describe the ritual killing of the priest-kings of a forest outside of Rome. In Chapter 1 of Frazer describes how he will go about studying this ritual, which he calls “the strange rule of this priesthood”:

The strange rule of this priesthood has no parallel in classical antiquity, and cannot be explained from it. To find an explanation we must go farther afield… Accordingly, if we can show that a barbarous custom, like that of the priesthood of Nemi, has existed elsewhere; if we can detect the motives which led to its institution; if we can prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstances a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike; if we can show, lastly, that these very motives, with some of their derivative institutions, were actually at work in classical antiquity; then we may fairly infer that at a remoter age the same motives gave birth to the priesthood of Nemi. Such an inference, in default of direct evidence as to how the priesthood did actually arise, can never amount to demonstration. But it will be more or less probable according to the degree of completeness with which it fulfils the conditions I have indicated. The object of this book is, by meeting these conditions, to offer a fairly probable explanation of the priesthood of Nemi.

How is this approach to symbols different from that of functional anthropologists? Let's look at the following section.

What about contemporary society?

Durkheim was writing about Australian Aboriginals. He viewed them as holding the most elementary religious beliefs of all societies. Most current anthropologists would disagree that the beliefs he wrote about were 'elementary'. But both Durkheim and most current anthropologists could agree that his ideas about symbols can apply, in certain respects, to contemporary societies around the world. I showed, for example, how to do this by applying Durkheim's theory to AFL. 

Nevertheless, clearly, the Indigenous Australian societies of the late 1800s differed from industrial societies such as Germany, the USA, etc at the time. Today's post-industrial societies are probably even more removed. Is there the unity of society that Durkheim saw in the clans of the Australian Aboriginals? Maybe Durkheim's description of egoistic suicide characterizes post-industrial societies better.

Assessing Durkheim's Theory of Symbols   

What do you find least convincing about Durkheim’s approach? As with all the theories we look at in this course, Functionalism both illuminates and obscures understanding symbols. So, unsurprisingly, a number of weaknesses or cons beset Durkheim's theory. You can uncover these by researching the topic more carefully.

One way to analyze the theory is to see how it fits with other theories. For example, it fits in quite well with Mircea Eliade's idea of sacred space.

One weakness, in particular,  frustrates undergraduates (and me). With Durkheim one of the main points is that humans divide the world into sacred and secular. And in The Elementary Forms, Durkheim is looking at sacred symbols and how revering them provides cohesion or solidarity. So, Durkheim's theory really only works for symbols that people can rally around and hold dear. Put another way, Durkheim only discusses symbols that people form communities around and hold sacred. However, in every culture I know of, there are many important symbols that we don't necessarily rally around or hold particularly dear. As will be discussed later machines--especially cars and computers--provide an important symbol. But there is no way that I hold the Dell desktop screen in front of me to be sacred. Later theorists--particularly Ortner and Geertz--will provide ways to account for these other important, but not sacred, symbols. Looking forward to that marks a good point to complete our introduction to Durkheim's theory of symbols.

The classic argument against functionalism holds that functionalism cannot account for change. Put another way, societies constantly change. But functionalist theory--Durkheim, Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown, and others--can not explain how this occurs.  Functionalist theory can account for how a society remains cohesive and functioning, but this is a static model of society. That's the standard criticism of functionalism. (I am not sure if I agree with this criticism. Writing in the 1940s, the functionalist Kluckhohn was deeply concerned with the effect of colonialism on the changing Navajo life.) Whether or not this criticism is valid, functionalism is pretty much dead-and-buried in contemporary anthropology.

Summary

You are now familiar with Functionalism, a theory that followed on from, and responded to, the 'Origins and Evolution' theory of Frazer and others.  You related Durkheim’s ideas to totems among indigenous groups of central Australia, Anzac Day rituals, the Veteran War Memorial in Washington, and Australian football. Along the way, you also considered the pros and cons of Functionalism. Your take-home message? Symbols give us something we can rally around. Now it's time to move on to the two major psychoanalytical theorists of symbols--Freud and Jung. But, for now, Durkheim's take-home message: sacred symbols are social glue.

1. Symbols as Survivals--Frazer

Introduction to Section 1

Now you have completed the Introduction and Overview to Symbols and Society, you are ready for Section One. I  introduce Frazer's theory that prehistoric magical beliefs live on in the contemporary world. These beliefs live on in the form of symbols. By the end of the section, you should be able to say what Frazer's theory about symbols can tell us about being a human; what questions Frazer's theory raises; what the strengths and weaknesses of his theory are; and, finally where Frazer sits in the history of anthropology.

First, watch this presentation.

Now listen to this lecture on Frazer. It introduces the idea of symbols as survivals; in other words that symbols are survivals of our ancestors' beliefs. Frazer's basic point is that prehistoric rituals which relied on homeopathic and contagious magic have survived, as symbols, past their used-by-date and right into modern times.

You can also use my lecture notes, if they help.

Now you can go ahead and read the following short chapters from Frazer's epic: The Golden Bough.

1. King of the Wood (you can skip from “I begin by setting forth” down eight paragraphs and resume at “Reviewing the evidence as a whole”);
 2. Priestly Kings; 
3. Sympathetic Magic; 
61 The Myth of Balder; 
68. The Golden Bough; 
69. Farewell to Nemi.

Next, I recommend you read my blog post; it highlights ritual elements in an Australian and New Zealand celebration called "Anzac Day". Anzac Day is akin to Remembrance Day in Canada or Veterans Day in the USA. We will analyze the symbols of Anzac Day at times during this unit.

Understanding Frazer: Evolution / Human Progress

For Frazer, human thought had developed from magic, to science, to religion; our intellectual history could be seen as a ‘web’: 

woven of three different threads—the black thread of magic, the red thread of religion, and the white thread of science… Could we then survey the web of thought from the beginning, we should probably perceive it to be at first a chequer of black and white, a patchwork of true and false notions, hardly tinged as yet by the red thread of religion. But carry your eye farther along the fabric and you will remark that, while the black and white chequer still runs through it, there rests on the middle portion of the web, where religion has entered most deeply into its texture, a dark crimson stain, which shades off insensibly into a lighter tint as the white thread of science is woven more and more into the tissue. To a web thus chequered and stained, thus shot with threads of diverse hues, but gradually changing colour the farther it is unrolled, the state of modern thought, with all its divergent aims and conflicting tendencies, may be compared. 

So we have moved from the red realm of religion into the white realm of science.

Understanding Frazer: Mistletoe as the Golden Bough

According to Frazer, our ancestors believed mistletoe had magical powers--it contained the life-force of, and the ability to kill or preserve. What it could kill or preserve was the sun, the god, or the king. In ancient times, these were the same thing: the king was also a god, who was the sun.

Personal crest of King Louis XIV, the Sun King.

Frazer provides many examples. But the one case he focuses on more than any other is the Golden Bough which kills the King of the Wood. Basically, in back in Roman times, there was a forest outside of Rome at a place called Nemi. At Nemi, a man called the King of the Wood 'ruled' over this forest/wood. But he could be killed and replaced by a slave. The slave would use the 'golden bough' from a tree. Now the slave was King, until another slave came and killed How to explain this 'strange' custom?

Balder struck down by mistltoe.

The other example he focuses on is a Norse story about a god named Balder. Nothing could kill him except mistletoe. Frazer thinks that what happened in the forest outside Rome back in Roman times is essentially similar to the story about Balder. This how he explains it all at the end of his monumental work:

In this concluding part of The Golden Bough I have discussed the problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood...kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse god Balder, who...perished by a stroke of mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood...had deposited their lives or souls for safety [in mistletoe.... This] furnishes me with a pretext for discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the [the Rites of Nemi a.k.a. the King of the Wood]. Thus...what is true of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself....

The mistletoe which kills Balder contains the same life force which gives Balder life; the same applies to the King of the Wood. Can you think of a similar case of something which give the hero power yet is also deadly to the hero? There is at least one famous example in popular culture

Understanding Frazer: Killing Shilluk Kings

Now another exercise. Read Section 24, Chapter 2 of the Golden Bough. Or you can read my summary if you're time poor. This introduces the idea of the divine monarchs or god-kings. Especially this question: Kings are divine in some societies, so why are they killed? What is Frazer's answer?

Shilluk King also a God

Divine monarchs have fascinated anthropologists. If you're interested in more about this topic, one of the biggest stars of anthropology Dave Graeber has written about them.  I've also summarized some of his writing in another blog.

Understanding Frazer: Summary

So if I had to provide a clunky summary of what we know about Frazer from this week's materials it would be this. Frazer says:

    Our human ancestors believed that the sun was in danger of dying. Every year, as they saw it dying, they had to bring it back to life. They believed they had the magical power to do this. They used a kind of sympathetic magic (call it homeopathic magic) to bring the sun back to life. One way to bring the sun back to life magically was to make bonfires.
     Our human ancestors also noticed that mistletoe springs to life just as the sun is 'dying'. They thought mistletoe was the key or source of the suns power. It was the magical object in which the power to revive (and also kill) the sun was kept.
        Thousands of years later, humans developed religion and kings. They believed that their kings were gods and vice versa. Royal subjects believed that their well-being depended on the god-king. If the god-king was ill, so was the realm, and vice versa.
    It was crucial that the god-king not be allowed to age and lose virility, else the lands would all become infertile, given the magical-religious connection between the god-king and his realm. Therefore, god-kings needed to be killed before they become elderly.
  We can see examples of that belief  in the Myth of Balder and Rites of Nemi.

What Frazer, I think, is hinting at in all this, is that the Christian belief in Jesus Christ as the "King of Kings" who was resurrected is an example of this ancestral belief.

For the purposes of this subject, you don't really need to remember who Balder was, what the mistletoe did etc. The take-home message is: ancestral beliefs survive as symbols in current rituals and stories.

Evaluating Frazer: Ethnographical Critique

Now you have an understanding of Frazer's theory, let's evaluate that theory. We'll start with Malinowski. Malinowski is credited with pioneering a methodological approach—participant observation. He outlines this method in the chapter “Introduction: The Subject, Method and Scope of This Enquiry” from his Argonauts of the Western Pacific.  In the following quotation, he critiques the idea that, for example, hanging up mistletoe is merely a survival, a cultural leftover, from the past.

In the passage we’ll look at, Malinowski is dealing with rituals. Rituals, for our purposes, symbols in action; meaning put into motion. It's the difference for example,  between bowing to somebody or bending over to stretch your legs, and between drinking a toast to someone and just drinking because you're thirsty. So to recap, Malinowski is critiquing treating rituals--symbols in action--as survivals.

Now let’s read the passage:

Much has been said and written about survival. Yet the survival character of an act is expressed in nothing so well as in the concomitant behaviour, in the way in which it is carried out. Take any example from our own culture, whether it be the pomp and pageantry of a state ceremony, or a picturesque custom kept up by street urchins, its “outline” will not tell you whether the rite flourishes still with full vigour in the hearts of those who perform it or assist at the performance or whether they regard it as almost a dead thing, kept alive for tradition’s sake. But observe and fix the data of their behaviour, and at once the degree of vitality of the act will become clear. There is no doubt, from all points of sociological, or psychological analysis, and in any question of theory, the manner and type of behaviour observed in the performance of an act is of the highest importance. Indeed behaviour is a fact, a relevant fact, and one that can be recorded. And foolish indeed and short-sighted would be the man of  science who would pass by a whole class of phenomena, ready to be garnered, and leave them to waste, even though he did not see at the moment to what theoretical use they might be put!

As to the actual method of observing and recording in field-work these imponderabilia of actual life and of typical behaviour, there is no doubt that the personal equation of the observer comes in here more prominently, than in the collection of crystalised, ethnographic data. But here also the main endeavour must be to let facts speak for themselves. If in making a daily round of the village, certain small incidents, characteristic forms of taking food, of conversing, of doing work... are found occurring over and over again, they should be noted down at once....the Ethnographer ought to record carefully and precisely, one after the other, the actions of the actors and of the spectators. Forgetting for a moment that he knows and understands the structure of this ceremony, the main dogmatic ideas underlying it, he might try to find himself only in the midst of an assembly of human-beings, who behave seriously or jocularly, with earnest concentration or with bored frivolity, who are either in the same mood as he finds them every day, or else are screwed up to a high pitch of excitement, and so on and so on. With his attention constantly directed to this aspect of tribal life, with the constant endeavour to fix it, to express it in terms of actual fact, a good deal of reliable and expressive material finds its way into his notes. He will be able to “set” the act into its proper place in tribal life, that is to show whether it is exceptional or commonplace, one in which the natives behave ordinarily, or one in which their whole behaviour is transformed.

The preceding passage is a critique of the 'survivals' approach of Frazer. The approach that Frazer takes is most closely associated with which method? Why does Malinowski imply the 'survivals' approach is "foolish and shorts sighted"? What, according to Malinowski, is a better approach?

Evaluating Frazer: Functionalist Critique

Frazer felt that the symbols of magic are survivals of merely a case of mistaken belief that magic exists. Radcliffe-Brown, if a society is to continue, the sum of all the elements of that society must assist to keep its members alive. If the society has beliefs and practices don't keep its members alive, the society dies off. So the rituals and symbols that Frazer described must function to enable a society to continue existing.

Sir James [Frazer] accounted for the taboos of savage tribes as the application of beliefs arrived at by erroneous processes of reasoning…. My own view is that the…rites of savages exist and persist because they part of a mechanism by which an orderly society maintains itself (Radcliffe-Brown 1979 [1939], 56).

Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown are pre-eminent figures in Functionalist anthropology. By contrasting their approach with the evolutionary approach of Frazer, we get a sense of the history of anthropology. We see over time anthropologists approached symbols asking different questions, initially, "what are the origins and evolution of this symbol?", then later "how does this symbol function?". This latter question is associated with Functionalism, which we study in Week 2. So if Frazer looks at a symbol and tries to trace its history, what does Radcliffe-Brown do when he looks at a symbol?

Evaluating Frazer: Post-modern Critique

Another critique of Frazer is described in the above presentation. A post-modern critique of Frazer would argue with the way Frazer posits the West as the most advanced society and other societies as relatively backward. Ranging backward from those which believe in science, to religion, to magic. As should be obvious from my Frazer presentation, the idea that the West is more advanced is problematic. Anthropologists use the word "teleology" to describe this Western-centred idea of progress.

Reflections

Outside of universities, Frazer's ideas about symbols are implicitly accepted, even by people who have never heard of him. Yet almost all contemporary anthropologists regard Frazer as problematic. I've outlined some reasons for this in my presentation. Another reason Frazer is largely discredited is that now we have modern archaeology as a discipline to discover and examine ancient material evidence. Although Frazer is enjoyable to read, his argument about prehistoric beliefs now seems to be based mostly on conjecture. And although Frazer initiated the modern discipline of anthropology, as we will see in the second half of the course, contemporary anthropologists prefer to analyze symbols based on the experience of participating in and observing the lives of people we study. They have adopted Malinowski's position, in other words. In brief, Frazer assumed that his culture was more advanced and Frazer did not undertake fieldwork. These facts undermine his credibility in the eyes of most contemporary anthropologists. Studying Frazer is nevertheless crucial, as the subsequent study of symbols in anthropology critically responds to the ideas put forward in The Golden Bough.

Final words

Frazer is one of the first modern anthropologists, so you now are familiar with starting point of our discipline. By this stage, you should have basic understanding of the discipline of anthropology. You should also understand Frazer's theory of symbols as survivals, being able to identify strengths and weaknesses in his theory of origins and evolution (especially as applied to symbols). As you go through the course, you should be able to situate his theory in relation to subsequent anthropological theories of symbols. To start developing that ability, please proceed with Section Two--Symbolizing Society.